Apix Carpentry

It was a HORRIBLE experience!  We had thought we'd been quite thorough in doing our homework, and still got burned - BIG TIME!  Craig has an amazing marketing strategy.  It doesn't matter how you search - carpentry, wood working, stair railing, etc.  His website is one of the first to pop up.  It is a beautiful website with wonderful pictures and great reviews.  We even checked with the licensing board and the Better Business Bureau and he had no 'dings' on his record.
We showed Craig examples of items in our home that we expected the quality to be comparable to.  We hired him to do the job, paying about 40% down - 2K, and   We had issues along the way.  Newel posts that weren't set even, rough edges, balusters out of order, uneven stain, etc.  Every day we would point out issues, things we weren't happy with and he would assure us that it would all be handled/fixed/taken care of before he was done.  On about the 4th day, he was packing up all of his equipment.  We asked him if he was coming back and he said that he was done.  We told him that we have lots of issues that we needed to point out to him that we were unhappy with.  It was very uncomfortable and awkward, and he indicated that he could maybe make things look a 'little bit better' and would come back in about 1.5 wks.
After he left, my spouse and I reviewed and discussed his work.  In addition to the extremely poor work product, he had also done damage to our home.  We had told him that we will remove the old banister, but he took it upon himself to do it, and smashed in our wall - never saying anything to us about it.  We found several globs of glue in our carpet.  One wall was smeared with glue and left that way - and very difficult to clean.  He even set the can of open/dripping stain on our new entertainment center!!  We decided that we were not happy, that it was not professional/quality workmanship, and that we had lost all confidence in his ability to make things right, and that he was not welcome back in our home.  We informed him that we would be getting bids from other professional contractors to figure out what needed to be done to make it be the quality that we were expecting.
We obtained multiple bids from other carpenters.  The concensus was that the railing was a complete loss and needed to be redone. The balusters could be salvaged, but the wood could not.  We informed Craig of this, and that he owed us a refund for the wood, as well as the cost we were being charged for the tear out.  He agreed to re-imbursing us for the wood, but not for the tear out.  We feel we could have/should have taken him to small claims court for that reimbursement and more - loss of wages for having to take additional time of work for re-do/etc. - but wanted to get the nightmare behind us, so we did not pursue.   We did get a small settlement from his insurance company which helped (thank goodness he was insured!) for carpet cleaning and sheetrock repair.